Insomnia
by DistractedStudent
Summary: It took a week for the first brother to notice something was wrong, but he didn't do anything right away.


**Sorry guys, I promise a chapter soon for Between a Rock and a Hard Place, but I had to write this. I'm dealing with the same problem as Leo right now and had to get out his brother's response. Since I don't know what's causing it for me, I don't really know what's wrong with Leo either. So who knows what will happen to this story**.

* * *

It took a week for the first brother to notice, but he didn't do anything right away.

They were enjoying a typical fight against some purple dragons. There were three thugs to each brother, but they weren't particularly skilled. Donny knew they shouldn't pose a challenge to any of them. As he landed a flip over a thug wielding a pipe, Donny caught glimpses of Raph grinning viciously at the two thugs he'd cornered and knew Raph was enjoying himself like usual. He could hear Mikey taunting a particularly scarred thug as he landed glancing blows over and over on her guys broad chest. Quickly Donny spun to his left and dealt a heavy blow to one of the Purple Dragon's head, and as he spun he saw something disturbing.

When they had engaged in the fight, Leo had immediately attacked the leader as usual. Donny had lost sight of him in the fight, but he hadn't been worried. Why should he? Leo, who had been training more than usual lately, was more than a match for every single gang member here. But as Donny spun now, he could have sworn he saw Leo's leg buckle as a gang member trapped his swords and pushed back. He could have sworn he'd seen it, but he had had to turn the other way to launch several ninja stars and when he turned back Leo was standing straight again and had the advantage.

Within a few seconds the fight was over and Leo was giving the signal to disappear to the roofs again. As they ran across the roofs silently, Donny tried to decide if he should confront his older brother. In the end, he decided he had nothing to really bring up. He wasn't even sure if he'd seen his brother fall. And if Leo had slipped, Donny knew Leo wouldn't appreciate Donny drawing attention to the fact. Besides nothing had come of it, right. Leo was fine so . . . . . Maybe he'd just keep an eye on Leo for the next little while.

* * *

It only took Mikey two more days to notice something was off.

Mikey was pulling off a particularly brilliant prank with three perfectly spaced buckets of water. The first two were meant to be distractions, so he could disarm his cautious brothers. He had expected to get Raph. Donny wasn't in the area and Leo . . . Almost never fell for his pranks. But this time, Leo had gotten soaked by the very first bucket. He hadn't even tried to dodge. Even more worrying was that Leo simply grabbed the bucket off his head and sighed. From his perch in the darkness along the ceiling, Mikey waited for the lecture, but Leo simply looked up and requested that Mikey clean up the water. If that didn't startle Mikey, the fact that Leo got soaked by the second bucket a few seconds later definitely did.

While Mikey thought it was odd, he didn't know what to do. Ask his brothers if they'd noticed Leo acting odd too? Nah, they'd just laugh at him.

* * *

It took a full two weeks for Raph to even consider something was off about Leo.

Raph had woken up at three AM, only two hours after they'd gotten home from patrol, to some sound downstairs. He tried to ignore it. He really did. But after ten minutes he dragged himself out of bed, completely intent on knocking out which ever brother dared to be up this early.

He slowly moved down the stairs rubbing a hand over his face and groaning. He found the source of the sounds training like a demon in the dojo. Maybe it was because Raph had been irritated with Leo before he went to bed, or maybe it was because Raph had gotten so little sleep, but as he glared at his leader's back Raph felt his anger build. Four seconds later, he snapped. His sai was out and heading for Leo's back before he even though about it.

Acting on some scary intuition, Leo spun knocking the sai away. And then his eyes widened. "Raph?" But Raph was already spitting out his frustrated words.

"Shell Leo! What's wrong with you? Do you really have to spend ungodly amounts of time at ungodly hours training to show us up?"

Leo's eyes narrowed as he spat back, "You don't know what you're talking about Raph."

Then Raph was running toward his brother with his remaining sai. As sword and sai clashed, Raph growled his face inches from his older brother's face. "Oh I don't? Do I? Your constant daily training wasn't enough for you, was it?" As he spoke, Raph grabbed Leo's hand and in a quick jerk through Leo over his shoulder. It wasn't until Leo landed that Raph realized that something was wrong.

Not only had Leo not defended against his flip, Leo hadn't curled. Hadn't landed right. Raph heard the smack as Leo's shell and head bounced on the floor, and quickly turned. Raph saw a train of blood from his brother's head and horror and fear filled his chest. Just as he began to panic, Leo broke his stillness and rolled to his side, a hand to his head. Leo retched for a few seconds and Raph broke from his horrified stupor to move toward him stammering. "I'm so sorry .. . . Leo .. . I . .. You didn't roll . .. I. . . I'm sorry .. I'll go get Donny . . . "

At this, Leo finally interrupted his stammering. "NO! Just let him sleep. Just go away Raph."

Raph was about to argue when his brother's expression hardened. "Go back to bed. You've done enough damage. I'll take care of it."

Horrified and guilty, Raph turned and fled from the dojo. It took him two hours to finally fall back to sleep.

* * *

Even Leo didn't know what exactly was wrong.

He hadn't gotten a full night of rest in almost three weeks. It was like his body was in perpetual nap mode. He'd crash in the middle of the day and would take a three hour nap in the guise of meditation. Then when he and his brothers returned from patrol, Leo would fall deep asleep as soon as he hit his bed . . . . Only to wake merely an hour later completely unable to go back to sleep. As his sleeplessness approached a week, Leo noticed his reflexes and strength failing him. During afternoon practice, he seemed able to find the strength to evade his brother's attacks efficiently, but he started worrying more and more about patrol.

He knew Raph was getting restless as Leo secretly led them away from the more dangerous parts of the city, but Leo just didn't want to chance running into Karai or the foot when he felt so incapable of defending his brothers.

Leo spent the rest of the night after his fight with Raph dabbing away the blood and retching over the toilet. He knew he probably had a light concussion and was toying with the idea of approaching Don in the morning. In fact, the only reason he wasn't waking up Donny now was because he wanted his whole team in top shape to make up for his failure. In the morning, he would ask Don for help. He promised himself.


End file.
